averilburystedmunds: The Autumn of Life

Ablaze in the Abbey Gardens

Autumn grows, autumn in everything. A lovely time of year with a hint of melancholy from time to time as the mists gather and the nights close in. I would love to have now the brilliant stove I enjoyed in Kent for around 30 years; warmth and light and welcome in one black metal box. But autumnal comforts are there in crowded bars and restaurants full of light and warmth, and in the recent over-supply of incessant rain in this, the driest part of England, have made the plants on my terrace, hold

their heads high in the unaccustomed moisture, with foliage of reds and greens flourishing in the abundant showers, hydrangea heads fading to paper and pansies lifting pretty purple faces to the grey skies! Some of the trees in the Abbey Gardens have put on a tremendously bright carapace of dying leaves, flaring with red and yellow in a final flourish. A seasonal page is turning, expected, but still surprising in its theatre.

"Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn — that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness — that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”

Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death."

Lin Yutang

After all, Jane must give way. The above quote from Lin Yutang with its premonition of death, is so comfortable for me. Today came news of the death of an old friend; she was 91and indeed, had had a “golden richness” in her life's experiences, was blessed with kindly wisdom and accepted the increasing age-related limitations of life, while savouring life’s joys too. She is hugely missed by her family and friends. Importantly, elderly people feel they would like a good death, but I am increasingly of the opinion that what is really to be cherished is a good autonomous life right to the end when a good death might well follow. And if it doesn’t, well, c’est la vie! One of the joys of ageing is the insouciance which accompanies it; the inner knowledge that not much matters hugely. Generally speaking, there is little to be gained by worrying.